


when I'm down on my knees (you're how I pray)

by the_casual_cheesecake



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Blow Jobs, God Emperor Doom, Light BDSM, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Podfic Available, Power Play, Secret Wars (2015), Sheriff Strange, Under-negotiated Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 06:35:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20792231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_casual_cheesecake/pseuds/the_casual_cheesecake
Summary: Stephen is relaying the daily reports, Victor feels ignored, and melancholic. It's a bad combination of slights for a god to endure.





	when I'm down on my knees (you're how I pray)

**Author's Note:**

> I have realized that there was no DoomStrange fic set in Secret Wars and as that was a slight upon my house and my good name, I wrote one. 
> 
> A huge thank you to Bool_Ji and Serinah for the beta work, you are what makes this thing readable and I love you.

“Why do you bother with this, Stephen?” 

“What do you mean?” Stephen looks up from his scroll at Victor on his throne. Stephen looks bored. He looks like he’s making the rounds in the morning and doesn’t appreciate his patients interrupting. 

Something about Stephen’s cerebration never fails to get under Victor’s skin. It’s like he forgets their conversations sometimes, or compartmentalizes them so well that they don’t even occur to him anymore. It grates on Victor’s nerves to be so casually dismissed; even if it’s in subconscious thought. 

“You know full well what I mean. This banality...this tedious record-keeping of minor transgressions.” Victor waves a hand at the scroll. 

“No more tedious than this disagreement we have had many, many times, my lord. You know full well why I do it,” Stephen replies, and ah, he does remember, he just prefers to play the ignorant then, Victor hums. “You are omnipotent, not omniscient. The danger to your throne and to this world--the last world--comes from what we do not know,” Stephen finishes. 

“Yes, but this is a world like any other world of old: full of danger. And we will face such things as we always have: together,” Victor says in an attempt at kindness. His irritation is playing a game of Russian roulette inside his mind with every word that comes out of Stephen’s mouth, but he would very much like to keep this conversation civil for now. “I remember our disagreements, Stephen. And your reports still concern me little.”

“You're in a damn tricky mood today, aren’t you?” Stephen says dryly, and...

Bang.

Well, kindness has never suited Victor anyway. 

He gets up from his throne in the center of the world tree and walks with slow, deliberate steps towards his friend, his advisor, the man who remade a world with him and wanted no part of holding the power. A vexing dilemma of a man, Stephen is.

Stephen holds his ground against the invasion of his space even when Victor is a hair’s width away from him. His quickened breaths inch their way inside Victor’s mask to stroke his lips, but Stephen is not moving away. The man raises an eyebrow at him. Victor could count each of the lashes framing his violet eyes if he wanted to.

“The troubles of Gods are infinite, old _friend_...” he sets a hand on the back of Stephen’s head. “Are you fixing to be one of them?” 

Stephen swallows and Victor can see his throat move. His palms ache with need, his skin feels starved inside its metal case, and he hates his armor with a fierce passion for one lonely second. 

“One’s right hand can’t be called trouble if it’s only doing what its master tells it to,” Stephen answers.

Something inside Victor stirs, it feels triumphant in its spread across his limbs. Inside his mask, he smiles. “Am I your master, Stephen?” he asks, attempting softness but his voice sounds smug despite himself.

“What do you think, God Emperor?” Stephen retorts. 

“Is that resentment I hear in your voice?” Victor says around the growl building deep in his chest, “Or is it regret?” 

“Regrets and resentment are not things I indulge in, my lord.” 

“Do you feel yourself yearning for them, Stephen?” 

Silence falls on the hall. Stephen looks apologetic, but doesn’t utter any apologies. Whatever was brewing inside Victor withers and dies and he feels the need to leave. He removes his hand from where it lay touching Stephen and takes a step back. 

He thinks about leaving the room, heading to see Susan perhaps. He imagines her waiting on their bed, perfect and lovely and his. He would walk in and she would smile and invite him closer; his skin tingles with the phantom sensation of her touch already. She would talk softly into his ear with her lovely, perfect voice, and praise him as he pleasured her. Her soft hands would touch his scarred face unflinching. She would love all of him, exactly as he is, she is perfect. 

He turns around, cape billowing around him, and makes his way back to his throne instead. Stephen waits for him and stands obediently were he was left. 

“You were a neurosurgeon Stephen, were you not?” Victor says.

“You know I was.” 

“Do you think memories make people who they are? Or are they born unique?”

“That is not a question of science, my lord,” Stephen answers after a pause, his confusion clear on his face.  
“If you believe it’s one of spirit, then you must think the answer to it is the latter.” Victor pauses, thinks for a moment. “Would you consider it a violation if you were to be remade in our world?” 

Stephen’s eyes widen incrementally, he opens his mouth to answer, presumably, but Victor interrupts him.“You would have none of the memories you’ve lived in the old world, none of the ones you’ve made here. You’d be yourself, but as if from another Earth, except you, the real you, the Stephen before me, would know another you existed somewhere out there, making choices and loving people, hurting people, living a life on the same ground you walk on.” 

“It -- it would not be me, I suppose,” Stephen answers eventually, reluctantly. “What is this about, Victor? Am I to expect a sudden need to be remade?” 

Victor chuckles. “Not as such, simply reflecting on some resentments of my own, I suppose.” Victor is as surprised with himself as Stephen seems to be. The honesty was unexpected. It settles heavily in the air, stealing the previous unease for itself. 

The small crease between Stephen’s eyebrows deepens the more he flips the statement in his head.The smallest movement in his forehead tells Victor where his thoughts are headed: confusion in the depth of the wrinkles, the forming of an idea just left of his temple, a muscle loosening in consideration, an eyebrow raised in unexpected acceptance, all in the space of a second. It’s so pleasing a feeling, to read him so openly for once.

Stephen doesn’t comment out loud, instead, his hand moves slowly, unconsciously, to rest on his own neck, where Victor’s hand was. “I didn’t think you suffered resentments, my lord,” he settles on.

“I think one would be lying, or replying in empty appeasement, if one said they had none,” Victor says pointedly. 

“I suspect you may be searching for transgressions to hold against me today, my lord,” Stephen replies, just as sharply. 

“I’m simply pointing out discrepancies. No judgment was meant. We are, after all, having a friendly discussion.” Victor pauses. “Or have we dropped the disguise of friendship for one of command?” 

“I think you like being in command of me, Victor,” Stephen replies instantly. 

Victor stares. Stephen is standing before him, regal and seemingly completely in control, looking right back at Victor as if he could pierce through the metal and know him in his entirety.  
Does he? Victor imagines Stephen on his knees, hands bound, looking up at him. Victor hums. It wouldn’t be in servitute, it would be in deference, in recognition of godhood, in worship. The monster in his chest wakes from its slumber at the image. The revelation of perspective is an attack, and the offending party is his subconscious; the powerlessness is an ugly, wicked thing. 

The silence teeters the room at the edge of a precipice. Words feel like chess pieces and Victor is stumbling inside his own brain looking for his fallen queen. Stephen seems to suffer under no such predicament. He raises an eyebrow and walks closer to the throne: one, two, three steps. Check. Stephen is almost between his knees. Victor is pinned.

“Am I mistaken, my liege?” Stephen says with the tone of a man who knows his answer, unconcerned, almost casual, if not for the intensity of his gaze.

It is a blatant challenge, a corner he is unwillingly painted into. A word from him will silence Stephen on the subject forever, because that is who Stephen is. He does not suffer the spurring of his affection lightly. Admittance, however, would be handing over the king for the slaughter. It is a concession of weakness.

“It is what my position affords me, I believe,” he says.

“Evasion is the tool of the weak,” Stephen replies. “My lord,” he adds. 

Victor ponders his options for three seconds, and then the word is out of his mouth, thundering around the room.

“Kneel.” 

Stephen’s stuttered gasp echoes on the stone of the throne room and his knees hit the floor in a second, astonished. His eyes don’t meet Victor’s, his face is tilted downwards like a loyal pet. Is that fear, Victor wonders, is Stephen expecting a blow that cuts him down, or has the extent of their gaming reached a point where Stephen believes he won’t be harmed? 

“I do,” Victor says. 

He bends and takes one of Stephen’s shaking, scarred hands in his. Stephen wets his lips and says nothing. He moves to pet Stephen’s black hair, he scratches at his scalp, and an aborted sound dies on Stephen’s lips in response. The suit grows uncomfortable around Victor’s groin. He adjusts himself in his seat and leans over to whisper in Stephen’s ear, “You look good on your knees.” 

A small moan escapes Stephen and he lowers his face. In shame, perhaps? There is no hiding from god.

Victor smiles wide, tangles his fingers deeper in his hair, and pulls. The gasp is accompanied by Stephen’s face twisting into a portrait of need. Victor has never seen a more beautiful thing. 

“Does the subjugation excite you, Stephen? Did you refuse godhood because it would give you no one to kneel before?” Victor taunts. 

Stephen glares at him, he opens his mouth to retort, but Victor tightens his hold on his hair. Stephen’s eyelids flutter and his face slackens in pleasure. Victor could almost feel Stephen’s senses leaving him along with the moan that rips itself out of the man’s chest.  
He waits. His hand tenderly strokes Stephen’s scalp, not moving him anywhere before he’s ready. It is never pleasant to exercise dominance on the unwilling after all. He breathes in the air, and revels in the familiarity of his own energy in it. He imagines the same air going inside Stephen’s lungs, caressing him more intimately than any person could, leaving traces behind inside his body to mark him, like it’s marked the entire world, as Victor’s. He breathes out and smiles. 

Stephen finally looks up at Victor, and his eyes are hooded. He’s flushed and wonderfully absent behind the gaze. 

“Do you want to ask something of me, Stephen?” Victor keeps stroking the man’s hair methodically, and waits once more.

Pride and need wrestle in a vicious battle behind Stephen’s eyes; it is, however, a short one. 

“Please,” Stephen finally says; a surrender. 

“Oh, dear Stephen.” Victor lowers his hand to caress Stephen’s cheek. Stephen’s eyes close for a moment and then open looking more lost. “Specificity is the soul of this exchange.” 

Stephen looks betrayed.

Victor’s queen is back in hand, the board is set for an imminent win. 

A pause, and then Stephen’s hand drifts up to cover Victor’s. He tilts his head and presses a kiss to the center of Victor’s armored palm, locks gazes with him and mouths at the crook of his thumb. His tongue laps at the metal, and Victor has never been so jealous of an inanimate object in all his years.

Stephen moves his kisses up Victor’s arm until he gets to the curve of his elbow, and then he shifts to his torso and down, licking at the white metal as he goes, his quickened breath fogging up the surface. He settles in between Victor’s knees and lowers his mouth slowly to press a kiss to his groin, holding Victor’s gaze with a challenging one of his own. He moves a finger to join his mouth and Victor feels the subtle tendrils of magic caressing his armor. 

It’s not a powerful enough wave to feel threatening -- not that Stephen could threaten him, not when his magic is connected so completely to Victor; Stephen’s a sorcerer with no other gods to worship but him -- it does serve as a hint though, and Victor isn’t about to deny him this.

He wills the armor to retract. Stephen’s gasp reverbs on the stone of the throne room when the magic touches him. Victor feels him shudder through the metal on his palm. Stephen catches sight of Victor’s exposed cock, and moans. Victor is sure it’s more to do with the situation than with his manhood; he is, after all, half hard himself, only from the atmosphere they’ve created, the tightrope of intense potential holding the room together.

Stephen flutters his lashes, licks his lips, then presses a kiss to the crown of Victor’s cock. A shiver passes through them both in tandem. Victor’s hand finds its way back to Stephen’s head and caresses his hair. It’s soft and pleasant on his skin; it feels intimate and lights something warm inside Victor’s chest.

Stephen presses kisses to the length of his cock and licks along the shaft, his facial hair brushes along with it. Victor’s nerves are on fire. He has never felt the starvation for touch more, it’s almost as if his skin has had a taste and now it’s screaming. When Stephen takes him in his mouth, Victor moans. He feels Stephen smile on his cock, so he pushes his head to take him deeper. The smile turns into a whine, and satisfaction feeds into Victor’s lust. 

Stephen looks obscene on his cock. His robes are perfectly pressed, his parchment on the foot of the throne, forgotten, and his mouth stretched around Victor like this was something they did, the lord of the castle and his right hand… A chuckle escapes him at the idea. Stephen glares at the sound and sucks harder in retaliation. The levity leaves Victor instantly. Stephen’s tongue is wicked and it teases at him even as he presses against the back of his throat. Victor feels like an invading force, like a conqueror. He leans back in his throne and thrusts up until Stephen’s lips are touching his base and he’s entirely covered within him. 

Stephen’s hand wanders down to his own robes, the heel of it presses on his no doubt aching cock, and no, that just won’t do. Victor sends an order in the air and binds Stephen’s hands behind his back with strands of magic.

“Darling Stephen, your pleasure will come when I will it or not at all,” Victor asserts. He grabs a hold of Stephen’s hair, and moves his head with his thrusts. Stephen’s guttural moans die on Victor’s cock. Victor laughs through the pleasure. He closes his eyes and thrusts into Stephen’s throat with his feet planted on the lower sides of his throne. He’s not entirely certain how Stephen isn’t choking, but his pursuit of gratification takes precedence. 

“Are you enjoying me fucking the doubt out of you, Stephen?” he says, breaths and thrusts in tandem through the words “Is this pleasing? Are you hard because I’m finally using you for what you were meant to be used for? The advisor fulfilling his life’s purpose -- sucking his king’s burdens out of him -- how positively rewarding for you.” The words spill from his mouth like verse to join the music of flesh and against wet flesh, he hardly knows what he’s saying but Stephen’s efforts double with every syllable.

“I would fill your mouth with holier, more important matters than the worries you slave it for. I own it, and you, and all this earth.” he growls through a violent thrust, “your time is better spent on your knees for me, just like this, than on the pointless sentiment you seem to carry for our subjects. They are irrelevant, Stephen. They are nothing but fabrications we’ve made so we’re not on our own for eternity. But this, me, you, your mouth on my cock and this room is ours, and it’s real because we’re real. Why would you leave this for anything else Stephen?” He was fucking lazily into Stephen’s warm mouth now. “Are we not the brightest things in this world? Is an existence of this not worth this wretched earth we’ve built like a monster out of the dead corpse of the multiverse? Burn it all. I’d sell it for a penny to have your mouth on me for an eternity.” 

Victor gasps and his thrusts stutter, he comes like a man deprived of pleasure for a hundred years. He holds the back of Stephen’s head and spills down his throat and Stephen swallows his load like a man starved, his greed and desire are painted on his face like a confession, his eyes glazed over with lust, his mouth a red bruise. 

He drools, mouth open and abused, obscene. His hips are thrusting into thin air, small almost unnoticeable movements. Victor wishes with all he has that he could kiss him He would give his kingdom and his crown at that very second if only he could taste his violence on Stephen’s mouth. He presses his thumb to his bottom lip instead and Stephen moans loud and unabashed, his tongue slips out to taste Victor and soon his thumb is enveloped in the wet heat. 

“Please.” Stephen mumbles around his digit, his voice is wrecked. He adds nothing, but his hips are still thrusting. He looks wrecked; he looks like a house fire, like his spine is crumbling under the heat, his foundation destroyed and burning everything around them, he looks like a natural disaster more than a man. His hair is mussed beyond repair, his clothes are crumpled and face bruised and it’s all Victor’s doing, and Stephen is begging for more. Victor has never loved anything in his life more than he loves him now. The man who wants to burn under him, by his hand. A miracle. 

“Can you stand?” Victor asks, his own voice is unrecognisable, his wonder achingly exposed. Stephen appears to be thinking and then shakes his head no. Well, that’s alright, Victor can do it for him. 

Victor touches Stephen’s garments and they disappear off him and scatter around the room just as if he took them off himself. Stephen’s eyes roll white at the taste of the magic this time. 

Stephen is gorgeous, scarred like a warrior, his skin a testament to his years in the way nothing in his current life is. His cock is jutting hard and proud and he makes no move to touch it, to try to break the bonds on his hands, loyal like an obedient pet. Victor loves him with an ache. 

Victor gets up from the throne, cape billowing around his naked form and moves behind Stephen. Stephen’s eyes follow him like he’s expecting to be left, abandonment and hurt already poised to jump to the surface. Victor would never dare desert such a lovely creature. What a waste that would be. What greed, what gluttonous shame. 

He kneels behind Stephen, his white cape spreads around them both like wings on the fallan; Stephen certainly looks fallen, and angelic, enough to deserve them. Victor traces a hand down Stephen’s back, counts his vertebrae one by one and burns to know them with his mouth. Stephen cries out like Victor had penetrated him. Need mingling with time, creating a creature of nothing but agony and moans. 

Victor reaches Stephen’s opening with his questing finger and Stephen’s hurried breaths stop for one long moment, until Victor starts circling the hole with his digits and Stephen lets out a wail. Victor aches to know the intricacies of his responses, to know the exact meaning of each sound and how he can summon it. He wants to categorize them in a list for the world to know because it is sacred, holy knowledge of the highest order, and Stephen deserves to be studied. 

He summons lubricant onto two of his fingers and enters Stephen with them. Stephen collapses down, bending to kiss the base of the world tree with his forehead and presents his ass to Victor like an offering to a higher power, and at this seat, in this room, with him, it is. 

Victor fucks him with his fingers in slow, even strokes and Stephen heaves with every thrust. He sounds like he’s crying, like he’s being tortured; maybe he is. Maybe Victor is playing the part of judge, the prison guard, and the interrogator in this game of theirs, maybe Stephen has always felt more a captive than a conspirator, maybe it was always meant to be this way in the end. Stephen crying at his feet. Victor decides in that moment that his prison is preordained, and fucks Stephen harder.

There is a litany of implorations spilling themselves from Stephen’s mouth, they’re breathy and die halfway through on broken words, they spill on the throne room floor and Victor consumes them into his soul, the first real declarations he’s heard in decades.

“You were meant for this, darling, Stephen. You’ve always searched for it and here you are at last. Subjugation to a higher power, does it please you?” He says, cruelly in Stephen’s ear. “Do you feel whole, or do you need me to be inside you first, to fill you where you need it most? I’d like to climb inside you, possess you into me until those seditious thoughts you harbour -- that you think I know nothing of -- scatter to the wind in fear of me, in awe of me,” he snarls. 

“You are, and have always been, the brightest of this world’s stars. Don’t make me pull you down out of the night sky. Stay like this, just like this, Stephen.” 

Stephen’s breath hitches, in shock perhaps, at the barbarous honesty that breaks their game down to ashes. He says no words, but begs for more with his entire being. His cock, hard and pointing at the heavens, is abandoned. Instead Victor searches with his fingers until he brushes against the spot that makes Stephen cry louder. It’s a wonder none of the Thors have stormed inside the room yet. Perhaps they have, and Stephen and Victor are simply too wrapped up in each other to give a damn. 

“Please, Victor, please, my lord, my liege, by the heavens and by our earth, in the name of all the stars and all our kingdoms, please, I need you.” The words are stuttered, interrupted by gasps and more precious for every breath they take. Stephen’s hands reach within their bonds to touch Victor’s stomach and Victor trembles, surprise and need mixing inside him into an explosion of the senses, a simple touch bringing him to his metaphorical knees from the man who brought him to his physical ones. 

He frames Stephen in his arm and touches his own naked chest to his naked back and they gasp together, a symphony of starvation and final, grateful satiation. Victor hugs the other man to his chest and continues to fuck him. His own erection is only slightly interested in the matter, but his skin is prickling with pinpoints of fire where his body touches Stephen’s. He moves them so that their thighs touch and it’s anguish. The room has turned into an exposed nerve in sympathy with their blight. 

Victor does not touch Stephen’s cock. He rubs at his most intimate places and refuses to give into the pleas. Stephen is actively sobbing now, heaving, desperate cries of pain or pleasure or something that encompasses them both and transcends definitions. 

It takes minutes, hours, maybe centuries. Time is irrelevant and inconsequential, but Stephen’s cries crescendo into the realm of wounded, dying things, and then he comes with a final thrust into the empty air, an offering, like the bloodletting of a sacred animal. Victor strokes his inner walls as he comes down from his euphoria until his breaths start sounding hurt again, and then Victor finds mercy in himself after all. 

He removes the bindings from his hands and Stephen falls into his arms, exhausted. Victor lowers them both to lay at the roots of the tree, wrapped in his cloak. He traces the lines of Stephen’s tears on his slack face, and wishes to kiss him once more. It’s a hurt so deep he almost cries. 

Stephen kisses the tips of his fingers when they touch his mouth and opens his eyes a sliver to send Victor an indescribable look. 

The silence stretches for an eternity. Stephen burrows his head into Victor’s chest and closes his eyes once more. 

Victor’s king still feels threatened. The game doesn’t feel won. It feels broken to pieces. 

Victor stares at Stephen and feels depowered, shaped irreparably by a decision he didn’t set out to make. It’s a wave of vicious, relentless evolution. It started on a cliff edge and has no way but down to a deep chasm. He listens to his own terror through the walls of his skull and quiets it. A god is only a god if he believes he is the largest, the holiest figure in the world. The faithful prayers he receives must start at the tip of his own tongue to proliferate his kingdom. 

There is no sanction for a kneeling god. Falling is not tolerated in a kingdom of war.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] when I'm down on my knees (you're how I pray)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21326452) by [Annapods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annapods/pseuds/Annapods), [Gondolinpod (Gondolin)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gondolin/pseuds/Gondolinpod), [The_Casual_Sounds (the_casual_cheesecake)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_casual_cheesecake/pseuds/The_Casual_Sounds)


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